Enterprise Search

Chapter 4. Planning for Search

Given the potential benefits and challenges of enterprise search it is surprising that the 2012 Findwise Enterprise Search and Findability survey indicated that only 14% of respondents had a search strategy, though 30% were planning to develop a strategy in 2012/2013. This result is consistent with the Digital Workplace Trends report from NetStrategyJMC and tends to support the view that search is not seen as a business-critical element.

Search does need to be planned. It is technically challenging, users have both high expectations and a high dependency on the success of search and there is going to need to be a substantial investment in personnel for the search support team. As you read through this book you will find there is just one single theme. I call it White’s Rule of Search Investment:

The impact of search on business performance depends more on the level of investment in a skilled team of people to support search than it does on the level of investment in search technology.

There is a corollary:

Without an investment in a skilled team of people to support search no matter how great the investment is in search technology there will be no impact on business performance.

Enterprise search also bumps into many business operations. The search engine will need to interface with other applications and there are some legal and compliance issues. In the future the boundaries between search, business intelligence and content analytics are going to become ...